Yelp expands its Fifth Avenue office

The business-review website adds 10,500 square feet at adjoined buildings between East 15th and East 16th streets where it now occupies 70,000 square feet, up from 10,000 square feet just three years ago.

Yelp, the Web service that provides online user ratings for everything urban, apparently has a five-star rating for its headquarters in midtown south.

The company just added 10,500 square feet to its space at 100-104 Fifth Ave., two interconnected buildings where it has grown from just under 10,000 square feet three years ago to about 70,000 square feet today with the new expansion.

The online company will take the additional space on the entire seventh floor at 100 Fifth Ave. for 10 years. Driven by the growth of tenants in the booming tech world like Yelp, rents for the space are in the $70s per square foot, a rate that is nearly double what they were just a few years ago. Yelp will lease its latest space for 10 years.

"We were doing initial deals in the high $40s per square foot," said Grant Greenspan, a principal of the Kaufman Organization, which bought the building in 2011 and then sold it last year to Clarion Partners.

After buying the property, Clarion Partners chose to retain the Kaufman Organization and Mr. Greenspan to manage and lease the building. Mr. Greenspan arranged the expansion with Yelp.

Mr. Greenspan said that tenants like Yelp like the fact that the buildings are two separate structures that can be combined into one space, something that Yelp has done during previous expansions on the second and fourth floors.

"They like having the variability of having a space that's all on its own or being able to knock down the wall and join two groups together," Mr. Greenspan said.